Current Affairs Quiz 07 September 2026

Statements 2 and 3 are correct, while Statement 1 is wrong. The FRA names the Ministry of Tribal Affairs as its nodal ministry, and rules under the Forest Conservation Act, 1980 require FRA processes, including claimant identification, rights vesting, and a gram sabha No-Objection Certificate, to be completed before a diversion certificate is issued. The FRA's actual text does not explicitly use the term "gram sabha consent" for forest diversion, exactly the position the Ministry of Tribal Affairs took in August 2026, making Statement 1 a classic "silent statute versus de facto practice" trap. When a phrase is in everyday use but the source law never actually uses it, it is worth suspecting a statement built on that gap.

The Committee found the average forest-clearance time for under-construction NHPC projects to be 106 months, identified as the "single most critical bottleneck," with projects like Teesta-IV stalled over pending gram sabha consent. This is a pure recall question, and it helps to anchor the figure to a memorable proxy, since 106 months is just under 9 years, a useful conversion for faster recall under exam pressure.

The Yarlung Zangbo becomes the Siang on entering Arunachal Pradesh and the Brahmaputra further downstream in Assam, a river central to India's Northeast for agriculture and flood management. Mapping a transboundary river's name changes across borders is a recurring UPSC favourite, similar to how the Indus, Sutlej, and Brahmaputra all cross international boundaries under different regional names, so it is worth always learning a transboundary river's name in every country it flows through.

Statements 1 and 3 are correct. The project is included in China's 15th Five-Year Plan for renewable energy, and the China Yajiang Group was set up to run the project, as revealed during Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing's April visit to Nyingchi. Unlike the Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan, India and China actually have no binding treaty on the Brahmaputra, with cooperation resting instead on non-binding data-sharing MoUs, making Statement 2 a classic "false equivalence" trap that pairs a well-known fact with an unrelated river to imply a parallel arrangement exists. It is worth never assuming a treaty exists just because a comparable one exists elsewhere, and instead verifying each river relationship independently.

The SCO was launched on 15 June 2001 by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Tajikistan, the "Shanghai Five" plus Russia and China, while India and Pakistan joined as full members only in 2017, 16 years after founding. This is a date-trap question, and whenever a grouping's founding year and India's joining year differ, it is worth expecting at least one Prelims question built on that exact gap.

The Bishkek Declaration condemned the military strikes on Iran and reaffirmed support for its sovereignty and territorial integrity. The SCO actually has no collective-defence component, unlike NATO, India did not endorse the BRI, and Pakistan is set to assume, not lose, the next SCO chairship. Three of the four options here are deliberately plausible-sounding institutional facts that are simply false for the SCO, so for grouping-based questions it is worth always checking what the organisation explicitly does not do, such as having no defence pact, before evaluating what it does.

The striped hyena enjoys the highest level of legal protection under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, and global population estimates put the total at 5,000-14,000, with India's share estimated at 1,000-3,000, possibly the largest national population, though India lacks an official census. This is a compound fact-check question combining a legal-status fact with a numerical-ratio fact, and for species questions it is worth always pairing the protection schedule or category with the population figure, since UPSC frequently tests both together.

Dragonflies and damselflies belong to the order Odonata, and their split life cycle, aquatic nymphs followed by terrestrial or aerial adults, makes them sensitive indicators of water-body health and land-use practices such as pesticide use. Option (d) uses the correct order name but flips the underlying fact, since Odonata are actually highly vulnerable to systemic pesticides like fipronil rather than unaffected by them, making it a "half-right" distractor. It is worth always reading every clause of an option, since a correct classification paired with a false justification is still a wrong option.

Bhutan is the first country in the WHO South-East Asia Region, the same region India belongs to, to be validated for eliminating dog-transmitted human rabies, and India's National Rabies Control Programme targets zero rabies deaths by 2030, aligned with the WHO's global goal. This is a two-part fact question testing both regional grouping and a target year, and when a neighbouring country's achievement is in the news, it is worth always checking whether India shares the same WHO or regional body, since examiners like to test that shared context.

Rajghat is identified as the capital of the ancient Kashi Janapada, one of the sixteen Mahajanapadas named in early Buddhist and Jain texts, and scientific analysis of its lowest excavated layer, pre-Northern Black Polished Ware, dated the settlement's origin to around 800 BCE. This is a site-to-Janapada matching question with a date attached, and for any archaeological site in the news, it is worth immediately anchoring it to both its Janapada or Mahajanapada and the dating evidence, such as pottery type or stratigraphy, cited, since both are independently testable.